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I'm surprised you think the 98 V70 AWD is a dog in stock form. You might want to check to make sure you don't have a boost leak somewhere.

You can put a straight flange 15G or 16T turbo (very similar) on your car. You do need to be careful about the angle gear (AWD system) as it is very sensitive. If you are doing all of these performance upgrades you definitely want to change the angle gear oil inside it. Use 75W-90 weight synthetic gear oil (Volvo has its own) and you will need 1 quart of it (actually .7liters). This is cheap insurance in my mind as a new angle gear costs about $2000.

The IPD tune should work ok with a new turbo but I have never tried it. It has put your boost levels up to about where the R is stock (which came with a 16T turbo in 98). IPD certainly will know more if you have a chat with them on the phone. You can always ask them to reflash it to utilize the bigger turbo for $$.

Definitely put a bigger exhaust on the car to help it breathe, and consider a downpipe upgrade from CJ or IPD or EST or get a custom one made. The additional breathing will help the car a lot. You can also put the S60R exhaust manifold on your car. It all depends on how crazy you want to get/how much money you want to spend.

Don't forget to upgrade your brakes and suspension if you make the car a lot faster! Safety first.

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I'm surprised you think the 98 V70 AWD is a dog in stock form. You might want to check to make sure you don't have a boost leak somewhere.

You can put a straight flange 15G or 16T turbo (very similar) on your car. You do need to be careful about the angle gear (AWD system) as it is very sensitive. If you are doing all of these performance upgrades you definitely want to change the angle gear oil inside it. Use 75W-90 weight synthetic gear oil (Volvo has its own) and you will need 1 quart of it (actually .7liters). This is cheap insurance in my mind as a new angle gear costs about $2000.

The IPD tune should work ok with a new turbo but I have never tried it. It has put your boost levels up to about where the R is stock (which came with a 16T turbo in 98). IPD certainly will know more if you have a chat with them on the phone. You can always ask them to reflash it to utilize the bigger turbo for $$.

Definitely put a bigger exhaust on the car to help it breathe, and consider a downpipe upgrade from CJ or IPD or EST or get a custom one made. The additional breathing will help the car a lot. You can also put the S60R exhaust manifold on your car. It all depends on how crazy you want to get/how much money you want to spend.

Don't forget to upgrade your brakes and suspension if you make the car a lot faster! Safety first.

I've already had to replace the angle drive,it was bad when I bought the car, but I haven't flushed the tranny yet, so I'll do that next.

The car was totally flat in the ranges indicated on the ipd website ECU upgrade - so I was assuming that it's poor performance was par for the course - all the Volvo dealer fellas pretty much felt the same way about it. The car does not exhibit any fault codes that may arise from vacuum leaks, and if there were a pressure-side leak, wouldn't that actually produce more boost, or does the newer system automatically back of timing/etc., in such an instance? The car doesn't exhibit the kind of behavior I've had with 200/700's with bad main turbo feed/output plumbing, so I don't think there's a problem there, but I'll check all the plumbing to be safe.

I'll start looking around for a 16T turbo and a better exhaust manifold.

To be honest, I don't want to spend crazy money on this car, I like it, but I'm certainly not in love with it. I've been driving 700/900's for the past 20 years, I just wanted something that handled a little better/felt different.

I've put the Volvo 17" R rims with 235/45ZR17 Pirellis on it (barely clears the trailing arms!!) so I've got clearance for larger brakes - which I will have to do.

Not sure what to do about the exhaust - IPD doesn't offer anything for the AWD's - and I'm not sure I want to spend so much on that. I guess I'll do the turbo/injectors and see how it plays out.

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I've already had to replace the angle drive,it was bad when I bought the car, but I haven't flushed the tranny yet, so I'll do that next.

The car was totally flat in the ranges indicated on the ipd website ECU upgrade - so I was assuming that it's poor performance was par for the course - all the Volvo dealer fellas pretty much felt the same way about it. The car does not exhibit any fault codes that may arise from vacuum leaks, and if there were a pressure-side leak, wouldn't that actually produce more boost, or does the newer system automatically back of timing/etc., in such an instance? The car doesn't exhibit the kind of behavior I've had with 200/700's with bad main turbo feed/output plumbing, so I don't think there's a problem there, but I'll check all the plumbing to be safe.

I'll start looking around for a 16T turbo and a better exhaust manifold.

To be honest, I don't want to spend crazy money on this car, I like it, but I'm certainly not in love with it. I've been driving 700/900's for the past 20 years, I just wanted something that handled a little better/felt different.

I've put the Volvo 17" R rims with 235/45ZR17 Pirellis on it (barely clears the trailing arms!!) so I've got clearance for larger brakes - which I will have to do.

Not sure what to do about the exhaust - IPD doesn't offer anything for the AWD's - and I'm not sure I want to spend so much on that. I guess I'll do the turbo/injectors and see how it plays out.

Check out www.eurosporttuning.com they used to have a AWD cat-back exhaust for your car..check it out.

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Well, part of the reason for the sluggish performance is the AWD. It saps a good amount of the power to the wheels. I am still using my 13G stock turbo and I think with the things I've done to the car you would not find mine sluggish...that said it is certainly different from the RWD Volvos.

Eurosport makes great stuff. If you have 17 inch wheels, you can move up from 280mm rotors to 302s. Slotted or drilled whatever you like. That'll be a good start without a great expense. The part numbers for the larger brackets and what not are listed on this site in the pinned threads. Volvo has 302mm rotors available as does Eurosport and IPD and probably George at Viva Performance (another good resource).

Glad to hear you have a new angle gear. Change out that fluid every 30K miles or so for insurance.

You can find a used S60R manifold at Erie Vovo or other Volvo junkyards vandsautodismantlers.com as well. If you do go for the 16T turbo it is probably wise to get the ECU re-tuned for it to ensure that you utilize the turbo properly given your stock injectors etc. (which from pretty extensive talks with a Volvo mechanic should be good for the kind of power both you and I are trying to make with our wagons).

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Well, part of the reason for the sluggish performance is the AWD. It saps a good amount of the power to the wheels. I am still using my 13G stock turbo and I think with the things I've done to the car you would not find mine sluggish...that said it is certainly different from the RWD Volvos.

Eurosport makes great stuff. If you have 17 inch wheels, you can move up from 280mm rotors to 302s. Slotted or drilled whatever you like. That'll be a good start without a great expense. The part numbers for the larger brackets and what not are listed on this site in the pinned threads. Volvo has 302mm rotors available as does Eurosport and IPD and probably George at Viva Performance (another good resource).

Glad to hear you have a new angle gear. Change out that fluid every 30K miles or so for insurance.

I guess I'm exaggerating a little - it's just that compared to the pull of the 6 cyl, and with the AWD - it does feel lacking in the torque dept...

I'll get those bracket #'s -I did the same type of thing with my old '85 740T - put the oversize brakes made quite a difference!

You can find a used S60R manifold at Erie Vovo or other Volvo junkyards vandsautodismantlers.com as well. If you do go for the 16T turbo it is probably wise to get the ECU re-tuned for it to ensure that you utilize the turbo properly given your stock injectors etc. (which from pretty extensive talks with a Volvo mechanic should be good for the kind of power both you and I are trying to make with our wagons).

Thanks, Bill.

Just to clarify, you're saying the stock injectors will still be OK in conjunction with a larger turbo? Is the manifold required with a larger turbo, or will it still breathe OK using the stock manifold?

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Good question! You are getting into un-chartered water here for me. I am pretty confident that with correct tuning, the stock injectors will be just fine.

The "R" manifold is gravy. I don't have one on my car (nor do I have an upgraded downpipe), but I think getting a 3 inch downpipe will free up some horsepower. Remember, the 16T isn't exactly a BIG turbo, but in Volvo speak it was the High pressure turbo option used in 98 on the T5/R cars.

To play devil's advocate a bit, the T5 and R cars had different injectors than the plain AWD...

Just for experimenting, why don't you see what the car is like with a freed up exhaust and downpipe. See how you like it. If it is still sluggish adjust the wastegate to the top of the factory spec. There is a range like 1.5-3 psi or something like that...make sure yours is at the top end of that.

The beauty of these upgrades is that you won't need to re-tune your IPD ECU. If it's still too slow after all that then maybe a 15G or 16T turbo and re-tuning to take full advantage. This way you aren't throwing money in all at once, and you can see results (or not) after each upgrade.